Styles / Fashion & commercial
Hollywood glamour portraiture
- Key, high: a small hard source, 8 cm across, 95 cm from the face, straight in front, 72 cm above the eyes.
- Fill, low: a large soft source, 80 × 50 cm, 1.1 m from the face, straight in front, 43 cm below the eyes.
- Hair: a small hard source, 10 cm across, 40 cm from the face, straight behind, 77 cm above the eyes.
- Rim: a strip, 10 × 50 cm, 99 cm from the face, behind, at the camera’s right, 17 cm above the eyes.
To scale, from the render’s scene file. One way to get this light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Rendered with this plan. A hard spot high above the lens (butterfly), a weak fill from low in front, a hair light on a boom and a rim light from behind, against black.
Render: a synthetic clay head made with MakeHuman, not a person, in Blender Cycles, 85 mm, f/5.6.
Greta Garbo
Clarence Sinclair Bull, Greta Garbo, 1931. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-US-not renewed). Source: Greta Garbo at Wikimedia Commons
Publicity portraits of film stars made in the studios' portrait galleries: a face or half-figure, close to the lens, lit by hard spotlights in butterfly or Rembrandt patterns, with a hair light and rim light carving it out of a dark ground. The large negatives were retouched by hand until skin, eyes and hair read as flawless, then printed in black and white with deep blacks. The pictures sold an ideal rather than a likeness, through fan magazines, posters and fan mail; from the late 1930s some were made in colour for magazine covers.
Shoot sheet for your kit The photographs Its portrait light in the lab
How the look is made
- Light the face with one hard spotlight placed high: above the lens for a butterfly shadow under the nose, or to one side for a Rembrandt triangle on the far cheek.
- Separate the head from a dark ground with a hair light from above and a rim light from behind.
- Work close with a large-format camera, keep the sitter still for the exposure and let the background fall into black.
- Retouch the negative until skin, eyes and hair read as flawless, then print a full black-and-white scale with deep blacks.
- Direct every pose: chin lifted, head tilted, eyes towards the light, hands, furs or flowers near the face.
Shoot sheet for your kit
Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.
Light
Key: a spot or bare head, from the camera, high, hard.
Rim or hair light: a spot or bare head, from behind, to the camera’s right, high, hard.
Fill: a softbox, about 35° to the camera’s right, soft.
Background light: a spot or bare head, from behind the subject, soft.
Rim or hair light: a spot or bare head, from behind, to the camera’s left, high, hard.
- Key high: about 30–45° above eye level, angled down.
- Shadow edges
- Shadows with crisp outlines, cast by a small or distant light: direct sun, a bare flash, a spotlight.
- Shadow depth
- Dark shadows that still hold some detail (a high lighting ratio, about 4:1 to 8:1: the shadow side two to three stops darker).
- Light on the face
- The light high and straight in front, so the nose casts a small butterfly-shaped shadow just below it and the cheekbones stand out (also called Paramount light). The light high and about 45° to one side, so the shadows of the nose and cheek meet and leave a small triangle of light on the cheek of the shadow side, under the eye.
- Shape & form
- Light turning gradually into shade across faces and objects, so their volume shows.
How the style is lit
- A hard spotlight high and in front of the face, above the lens, casting a small butterfly shadow under the nose, with a weaker fill from low in front.
- A hard key light high to one side, leaving a triangle of light on the shadowed cheek (Rembrandt pattern), against a dark backdrop.
- A hair light on a boom above and behind the sitter, plus a rim light to separate the head and shoulders from the black.
This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. The set-up at the top of the page is the one we rendered, to scale. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Lens and settings
Start at
On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.
- The style’s f/13 on 8 × 10 in gives about the depth of field of f/1.8 on full frame.
- Then
- 45–65 mm · f/8–f/22 · 1/10–1 s · ISO 16–100 on 8 × 10 in, inferred from the gear and the look. 8 × 10 view cameras are documented; lens, stop and time are inferred: long lenses, f/11–f/22 for a sharp face under hot spotlights, fractions of a second. A 1941 Hollywood studio study (Mortensen: 4 × 5 Graflex, 7 in Dagor, 1/5 s at f/16) fits.
- White balance
- Black-and-white sheet film needs no colour balance; the 1940s colour portraits are on tungsten-balanced transparencies matched to the hot studio lights (inferred).
- Focus
- One plane sharp, the rest melting into blur and bokeh. A soft glow around highlights; edges never quite sharp.
- Angle
- The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.
- Distance
- Within arm’s reach: faces, hands and details fill the frame.
- Balance
- Tilted lines and oblique movement drive the picture.
- Crop & fill
- The edges cut into the subject: heads, limbs or objects run out of frame.
- Duration
- An unmoving scene, exposed slowly and carefully.
Direct
Pose the sitter close and still: reclining on a couch or leaning on an arm, shoulders turned three-quarter, head tilted, chin lifted to the light or dropped with the eyes raised to the lens; a slow, heavy-lidded, unsmiling gaze, into the lens or up past it; hands shaped and brought to the face, the hair or a fur collar.
- Body position
- Lying down or propped on an elbow: on a sofa, the grass, the sand or the floor.
- Turn to the camera
- The body, the head or both turned about 45° from the lens, so one side is nearer the camera and the far ear is hidden.
- Head & gaze
- Looking straight into the camera, so the subject meets the viewer’s eye. The head canted to one side: softer, curious, playful or cute. Face and eyes raised towards the light or the sky: hope, devotion, longing.
- Arms & hands
- Hands touching, framing or cradling the face, the chin, the neck or the hair.
- Expression
- Heavy-lidded eyes and a slow, intense, unsmiling look: the screen-idol gaze of glamour portraits.
- With the sitter
- The sitter arranged and still, facing the camera. The subject performs for the camera and shapes the picture.
Style the set
Studio wardrobe and a full glamour face: furs, satin, velvet drapes or a crisp blouse; sculpted brows, dark glossy lips, lashes, hair set in polished waves (groomed and slicked for men); a dark or graded backdrop, a couch or cushions; all chosen by the studio's wardrobe, make-up and hair staff.
- Clothes
- Best clothes, jewellery and accessories put on for the studio or the occasion.
- Hair & make-up
- Visible artifice: sculpted brows, strong lips, lashes, contouring and set or sculpted hair.
- Set & props
- A painted, cloth, paper or seamless backdrop behind the subject.
- How much is styled
- Clothes, hair, make-up, props and set all chosen and placed by a team to one idea.
Finish
- Monochrome
- Rich blacks, clean whites and every grey between.
- Film
- A view camera on a tripod: great detail, slow and deliberate.
- Texture
- Smooth tones with no visible grain.
- Post-production
- Perfected skin and surfaces.
- Shown as
- Each picture stands on its own.
- Shown in
- Pictures made for magazine pages and spreads.
Stay away from direct on-camera flash, overcast & flat daylight, snapshot, candid & unobserved, visible grain, straight print, 35 mm film, unseen camera, awkward & in-between, laughing, natural face & hair and flat form.
Before you shoot it
The historical portraits show real, named actors, and the studios' make-up, lighting and retouching set a narrow, unreal standard of beauty.
Photographs that define it
From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.
Lauren Bacall
Laszlo Willinger, Lauren Bacall, Modern Screen, March 1946. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-US-no notice). Source: Lauren Bacall at Wikimedia Commons (scan from Modern Screen, Internet Archive)
Ramon Novarro
George Hurrell, Ramon Novarro, The New Movie Magazine, February 1930. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-US-not renewed). Source: Ramon Novarro at Wikimedia Commons (scan from The New Movie Magazine, Internet Archive)
Greta Garbo
Ruth Harriet Louise, Greta Garbo, 1927. Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-old-80-expired). Source: Greta Garbo at Wikimedia Commons
With other styles
Pairs with Pictorialism. For a 1920s variant, add pictorialism's soft-focus lens and toned print to the spotlit glamour face.
The opposite: Y2K digicam and flash revival. Direct on-camera flash flattens the face that glamour lighting sculpts; use it as the foil when you want the opposite of polish.
The opposite: Diaristic snapshot photography. The diaristic snapshot keeps blemishes, grain and real rooms; glamour removes all three, so decide which promise the portrait makes.
Sources
- George Hurrell, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hurrell (MGM head of portraits until 1932, own studio 1932–1938 at 8706 Sunset Boulevard, Warner Bros. and Columbia in the 1940s, Novarro and Shearer sittings)
- Ruth Harriet Louise, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Harriet_Louise (ran MGM's portrait studio 1925–1930; Garbo, Crawford, Shearer; Dance and Robertson, Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography, 2002)
- Clarence Sinclair Bull, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Sinclair_Bull (head of MGM's stills department; Garbo 1926–1941; skilled in lighting, retouching and printing)
- Laszlo Willinger, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Willinger (in the United States from 1937; MGM portrait of Luise Rainer c. 1937; one of the first Hollywood photographers to experiment with colour)
- Portrait photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_photography (butterfly lighting, a favourite of Hurrell, often called Paramount lighting)
- Rembrandt lighting, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt_lighting (the triangle of light on the shadow cheek; DeMille's use of the term in 1915)
- Mary Mallory, Hollywood Heights – George Hurrell, Los Angeles Daily Mirror: https://ladailymirror.com/2020/04/20/mary-mallory-hollywood-heights-george-hurrell-2/ (Hurrell's negative retouching with powdered graphite and a blending stump, about three hours per negative; his retoucher Andrew Korf)
- John Kobal, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kobal (the 1974 V&A exhibition of Hollywood photographs; rediscovery of Hurrell, Willinger and Bull and new prints from their negatives)
- Glamour photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamour_photography (Louise and Hurrell used lighting to glamorise stars; wartime pin-ups)
- Hurrell Lighting, Digital Field Guide: https://www.digitalfieldguide.com/blog/5473 (contact prints from 8×10 film in a view camera; slow shutter speeds so sitters held still; orthochromatic film; key light above and in front of the face; glow from uncoated lenses; retouching on the 8×10 negatives)
- George Hurrell, Joan Crawford, 1931, lot essay, Christie's: https://onlineonly.christies.com.cn/s/photographs-portrait/joan-crawford-1931-47/20807 (a movable boom light lighting the cheekbones with shadows under nose and eyes; radical negative retouching)
- Dennis Morgan, Kodachrome by László Willinger, 1946, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dennis_Morgan._Kodachrome_by_L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Willinger,_1946.jpg (Kodachrome studio portraits in the 1940s)
- Wikimedia Commons file pages of the specimens, with their public-domain tags and the magazines they were scanned from (Movie Classic May 1932, The New Movie Magazine February 1930, Modern Screen March 1946): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greta_Garbo_by_Clarence_Sinclair_Bull,_1931.jpg
- Starlight and Shadow, Virginia Postrel, The Atlantic (July/August 2007): https://vpostrel.com/articles/starlight-and-shadow (Hurrell's movable boom light; working with shadows to design the face; Hurrell: 'When we stopped using those 8-by-10 cameras, the glamour was gone'; heavy retouching)
- International Photographer, September 1941, frontispiece note, Media History Digital Library: https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/internationalpho13holl_0269 (William Mortensen's study: 4 × 5 Graflex Series D, Dagor 7-inch lens, Eastman Super-Ortho-X film, one-fifth second at f/16, 'modified basic' lighting; the same issue's Hurrell interview gives no numbers)
